https://dementia.nz Dementia New Zealand offer extensive resources and support both for the person living with dementia (which includes facilitated group activities) and their caregivers (which includes facilitated support groups where family carers can share experiences and gain mutual support)
https://dementia.nz/our-mind-matters-magazine-issue-40/ There are useful articles in this issue on nutrition and sleep. There is also an article on managing caregiver guilt, which I contributed.
https://dementia.nz/grief-and-loss This is a very useful summary of why both the person diagnosed with dementia and their caregiver experience grief and loss, as well as options to help.
https://alzheimers.org.nz Alzheimers New Zealand raise awareness of dementia mate wareware, providing information and resources, advocating for high quality services, providing practical tools to support a dementia friendly Aotearoa New Zealand, and promoting research.
https://carers.net.nz Carers New Zealand was set up by and for carers of all types. The site has many valuable resources including a downloadable Guide for Carers.
These are the resources I recommend; many people have found them helpful.
Dasha Kapir: Travellers to Unimaginable Lands. I love this book. The author has been a caregiver (albeit not for family) and a clinical psychologist. She has facilitated dementia caregiver support groups in the US for many years. In this book she tells caregiver’s stories in an entertaining way and shares psychological insights that attempt to explain why it is tough to be a dementia caregiver. It is a validating book.
Pauline Boss: Loving someone who has Dementia. Having spent her life in academia - she coined the term ‘ambiguous loss’ to describe a loss where the person is physically present and increasingly psychologically absent, she wrote this book for caregivers. This book provides empathy, insight and advice garnered from her years of experience.
Sandy Braff & Mary Rose Olenik: Staying connected while letting go: The paradox of Alzheimer’s Caregiving. This book is told through the stories of caregivers and identifies the emotional problems that caregivers face and how the people they write about have found ways to live with the losses and challenges of dementia.
An interview on RNZ with Dan Colley an Irish playwright who created ‘Lost Lear’ a play about relatives managing dementia. The first part of the interview is about the experience of people using the process of going with the reality of the person with dementia ('The Specal Method') in other words if the person thinks they are at work or have been gardening, going with that. As this is often difficult for family to accept/imagine/do it might be of interest https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2018925051/dan-colley-on-dementia-connection-and-his-play-lost-lear
Understanding Dementia online course. The University of Tasmania run Wicking: a dementia resource and education centre. If you want to understand more about dementia and how it affects the brain and hear from people with dementia and caregivers this is an informative course – and it’s free: https://www.utas.edu.au/wicking/understanding-dementia